


conspirators in living

by liketheroad



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:56:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his mother "retires," Arthur finds himself in need of a new business partner. He gets a bit more than he bargained for with Eames. OR; in which Arthur becomes a real boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	conspirators in living

When he’s seven years old Arthur’s mother takes him into his first shared dream. They’re in a park together, and Arthur is pleased that there are no other children spoiling it. His mother pushes him on a swing for what feels like hours before he goes to the sandbox to build castles alone. He builds and builds, not just castles but roads and huts until he is surrounded by a whole city, until he finally notices that he’s never ran out of sand, or space to build new structures. Until he notices he’s been working for hours and hours but still the sun is in the very same place in the sky.

He looks at his mother, sitting away from him on a park bench, reading a novel and not paying any attention to him. She always pays such careful attention to him, and that’s when he truly knows something isn’t right.

“Where are we?” He asks, not alarmed, not frightened, never when he’s with her.

She smiles and puts down her book, “We’re in your bedroom at home,” she tells him.

He shakes his head, “We can’t be, we’re at a park, but how did we--”

“How did we get here? Very good, Arthur. That is always the first question you should ask yourself when you realize you might be dreaming. Always trace your steps. If you can’t remember, or if what you remember doesn’t make sense, that’s when you need to do something to try and wake yourself up.”

“How do I wake myself up?”

She tilts her head, smiling. “There are lots of ways, some of them more pleasant than others. For today, all you have to do is wait, just a little while longer.”

“What are the other ways?” Arthur presses, sensing a secret he has to prove himself worthy of knowing. It’s so often that way, with the lessons she teaches him.

“Do you really want to know?” She asks, and he nods, eager to prove himself, eager to show her he’s ready for whatever she has to tell him.

She looks at him for what seems like a long time, and Arthur keeps his face blank and his shoulders straight, never blinking as he stares back at her.

Finally, she gets up, and walks over to him. She leans down to kiss his forehead, and then she snaps his neck.

\---

There are many times after that. Hundreds by the time he’s 13. More than Arthur can count, can keep separate, by the time he’s 17. By then he’s stopped trying to keep track, anyway, stopped bothering to try to find meaning in every individual dream. The only ones that really matter are the first, and the last.

\---

They’re working together, as they always do. The family business, Helen calls it, a label she uses with private irony, given that there has been nothing short of professional about their relationship in nearly a decade. Arthur privately considers it a credit to the woman that she has been able to so effectively separate their former familiar relationship with their professional one. A more foolish or sentimental person might not have been, and Arthur is glad that neither of them are such people.

Arthur has assembled all the relevant information they’ll need to extract the desired information from their mark, who is already asleep. He’s prepping Helen to go under, and she catches his hand for a moment, squeezing.

She doesn’t comment on the gesture, the first time she has touched him without purpose, when not attempting to facilitate their work, in years. Arthur doesn’t even pause once she’s let his hand go, he simply finishes his work, and watches with satisfaction as she falls instantly to sleep.

He puts himself under last, and then he is transported, awake and aware in the middle of the apartment Helen built for this dream. He’s alone in the room; Helen should be in the room directly above him. Their mark, a bookie who stole from their employer, should be in their version of his own apartment, down the hall.

Arthur checks behind his back, and smiles, just a little, to feel the weight of the gun he’d willed to be there. He exits the room, and knocks sharply on the mark’s door. He doesn’t expect to be let in, but that’s no reason to forgo good manners.

Once his repeated knocking has been answered with silence and then a heartfelt, “Fuck you, asshole,” Arthur takes a step back and kicks the door open in one fluid motion.

He has his gun drawn before he’s crossed the threshold. “Where’s the money, Vince,” he demands calmly.

Vince is sitting in his air chair in boxers and a wife-beater, with a beer in one hand and a bag of Cheetos in the other. _Such a cliche_ , Arthur thinks dismissively.

“The money,” he repeats, voice becoming lower, more threatening.

“Fuck you,” Vince says again.

Arthur shoots him in the leg. “Tell me where it is, and maybe I won’t shoot the other one, too,” he offers magnanimously.

Vince is temporarily distracted by the gunshot wound, and Arthur gives him the courtesy of a few moments to moan and clutch his bleeding leg.

When Vince shows no sign of cooperating, however, Arthur feels himself lose patience, “Where. Is. It.”

“Like I’m gonna tell you, it’s my only ticket outta here. If I don’t use that money to get away, I’m dead anyway. You might as well save me the trouble of running.”

Arthur considers shooting Vince again, but he turns away instead, and looks at his watch. By now, Helen should have had time to search the apartment above them, which happens to belong to Vince’s girlfriend. By now, Vince’s subconscious should have hidden the location of the stolen money up there for her to find.

He waits another few strokes of his pocket-watch, just to be sure, and then he shoots himself in the head.

\---

Helen is not awake and waiting for him when he comes to in the warehouse they’ve been set up in for the past several weeks. She is still sleeping, and so is Vince.

Cursing, Arthur hooks himself back up and goes under again.

He doesn’t bother with Vince this time, instead he goes straight to Helen.

She is sitting on the couch, her hands folded in her lap, holding a pistol.

“Safety deposit box 17, at the Dominion Bank on 21st street. The code is 4949900.”

“What?”

“That’s where the money is.”

“Yes, thank you. What I _meant_ was, given that you know that, _what_ are you still doing here?”

“I like it here. I’ve decided to stay.”

“You can’t do that, Helen. This is a dream - you can’t stay here.”

“I can, Arthur. And I will.”

Her voice is calm, confident, but so is his. He will convince her of this. He has before.

“You’ll wake up, I’ll wake you up.”

She shakes her head, “Not this time.”

He takes a step towards her, his face never betraying a hint of alarm, “Why not this time?”

“Because this time I made sure, this time I switched the compounds. I used a sedative so powerful not even hurling me off a building would wake me up, a sedative so strong that it doesn’t matter if you kill me, because I still won’t wake up. I’ll never wake up.”

He immediately starts doing calculations in his head, starts trying to determine if she’s telling the truth. Theoretically, it’s certainly possible. Given the look in her eyes, it’s almost certainly true.

“Why?” He asks eventually, when he decides that’s the only part that really matters.

She smiles, “Because I’m tired. Because it’s time.”

“Why here?”

“As I said, I like it here. We made quite a lovely world, outside of this apartment, didn’t you wonder why I even bothered?”

He had wondered, but he hadn’t asked. He never asked her questions unless he knew she wanted him to, unless he thought he wouldn’t eventually be able to figure out the answer on his own.

“And when you die? When you age, because you will, you know. Even down here.”

“Of course I know, Arthur, I’m the one who taught you, after all. But there’s no need to worry, once I die, whenever I decide it’s time for that to happen, I’ll simply go somewhere else. Somewhere deeper within my own mind.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I suppose I don’t, not really. But you have to admit, it’s a sound theory.”

He presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a conciliation to his anger, to the confusion and fear that is flooding his body at the realization that there really is nothing he can say to her now. Nothing that could change her mind. He’s disappointed in himself for reacting this strongly, this irrationally. It’s her choice to make.

And he does have to admit, it _is_ a sound theory. “I suppose this is good-bye, then,” he says stiffly, keeping his emotions in check, as she has taught him, that, perhaps above all else.

She nods, “Yes, it is. But before you go, please permit me ask one last thing of you.”

He carefully raises one eye-brow in silent acquiescence.

“This task, I hope, I have already given you the tools to execute on your own. I have seen nothing in you to the contrary, as of yet.”

“What is it?” He demands, unable to stop the heat in his voice.

She smiles, just a little, and Arthur remembers it as the fond smile of a mother who loved him, once upon a time. When he was still her son and not her business partner.

“Your father left because he couldn’t bear to accept that he had a wife who was better than he was. Because he couldn’t take the affront to his pride it would have been to accept that when it came to dreams, I was always going to be the better man.”

Arthur blinks, stunned, above all else that has happened in this dream, to hear her speak of his father. She has never done so, beyond the obliquest of references, in his whole life.

“You’re asking me not to be the kind of husband who can’t accept that his wife might be more talented than him? That’s your final request?” He asks incredulously.

She shakes her head, and for an instant he sees her look disappointed, “No, Arthur. I’m simply hoping, one last time, to instill in you the importance of never allowing yourself to be the sort of person who lets anyone else be better than you at whatever it is you choose to be.”

Before he can respond, she adds, “Make me proud,” and then she fires.

\---

He doesn’t know what to do with the body. It may be breathing, may have the appearance of life, but that’s what it is. Not Helen anymore, certainly not his mother, just a warm body he doesn’t know how to get rid of.

He leaves it in the warehouse, at first, while he phones in the location of the money and monitors the wire transfer securing the payment for another job well done. After that business has been taken care of, however, lingering starts to feel unbearable, his hands twitching to be _doing_ something, his mind racing.

He calls in a favor with a chemist they’ve worked with a few times, purely contract work, nothing sentimental, but he trusts the man more than most people in their line of work, so Arthur feels it’s an acceptable risk. He’s already been assured she isn’t going to be waking up.

He transports the body to the chemist’s shop, which conveniently has a dream-den in the basement. Arthur has always hated those places, full of silk cushions and bad music, the air thick with the smell of incense and hashish. Helen hated them too, and he almost changes his mind, but there really is no other place for her.

He leaves the chemist with a sizable amount of the last job’s profits, with promises for monthly payments in exchange for any updates, as unlikely as they may be, and, above all, for his discretion.

After taking care of the body, Arthur immediately begins sniffing out new job possibilities. He and Helen worked almost exclusively as a team, but he has enough of a reputation of his own by now that he has no concerns about his ability to find work. There’s always work for someone as capable and willing to operate in the morally gray as Arthur.

A few day’s research provides him with several acceptable job prospects, but the only one that really interests him the most is also the most frustrating, because he knows, realistically, that it can’t be pulled off alone. Basic logistics aside, the job quite clearly calls for a forger, and along with the more advanced architectural work, that was always Helen’s speciality. There are simpler jobs he could surely complete on his own, but the thought of such banality leaves him cold.

The only thing for it, Arthur determines, is to find a suitable new partner before he resigns himself to mediocrity.

\---

There are a few skilled forgers on his radar, mostly because they worked for he and Helen’s competitors, and she trained him to always know the skills and weaknesses of his competitors as well as he knew his own. But while they are all capable enough, Arthur finds he doesn’t like the idea of working with anyone who has been in the business as long as any of the suitable candidates. He isn’t interested in learning someone else’s patterns, becoming accustomed to their philosophies about the type of work they do, the ethics of going into other people’s dreams. He’s never been one to compromise.

It will take longer, but after some consideration, he resolves to find and train his own forger, instead. He looks forward to the challenge.

\---

It’s not actually as hard as he anticipated, somewhat to his disappointment, to find a promising candidate. Arthur only has to spend a few weeks scanning the Chicago underground before he’s had the pleasure of observing the handy-work of a thief and occasional document forger named Eames enough times to be all but certain he’s found his apprentice.

Eames has appalling taste in practically everything; food, clothing, drink, speech patterns, and footwear, to name but a few. He is, however, in the possession of an impressively quick pair of hands and wit. He can be dazzlingly disarming when he wants to be, and Arthur has seen him charm the information off his mark almost as many times as he’s caught Eames stealing it.

These qualities, along with Eames’ apparent fondness for hurling himself into dangerous situations with a mad-cap air about him and a cocky grin on his face, will surely serve him well in Arthur’s world.

After watching Eames in action for long enough to be satisfied he’s worth the further investment of Arthur’s precious time and energy, he retires to his hotel room and begins doing background research.

The facts he learns about Eames are as follows. He’s a Londoner, exactly four years and seven months older than Arthur, and has been working in Chicago for the past year and a half. His parents are dead, but he has an older sister living in London, to whom he carefully routes the majority of his earnings every month. From the difficultly that comes from attaining this information, Arthur also learns that Eames is as clever about his secrets as he is about his work, although he displays a certain amount of cocky over-confidence in both areas. He also has a propensity for gambling, particularly but not limited to poker and roulette. Arthur can appreciate the practice for deception poker offers, and can even sympathize with the rush of putting one’s fate in the hands of chance, as in roulette.

So long as he can come to accept Eames’ unfortunate predilection for combining paisley and tweed, he thinks that they will make for an excellent team.

\---

Eames, when Arthur lets himself into his hotel room and lays out his proposal, is initially less enthusiastic.

In fact, he pulls a gun on Arthur and very nearly shoots him before Arthur can even properly introduce himself.

They get past that part, however, and soon Eames has put his gun away entirely and is listening to Arthur describe the world of forgery as it’s practiced in dreams with a look of unrestrained want. Arthur isn’t surprised by how quickly Eames is coming around to the whole thing, especially not after he convinces Eames to go under with him. When they wake, Eames is breathless, exhilarated, and Arthur allows himself a small, satisfied smile.

There really is nothing quite like it.

\---

“Are you ever going to tell me your last name?” Eames asks, in the middle of his third day of training.

Arthur puts the finishing touches on the skyscraper he was building around them, and then turns to Eames and says, “No.”

Eames rolls his eyes, as he has a tendency to do, when Arthur is concerned. He finds it bothers him less than such behavior normally would.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have one,” Arthur explains, deciding quickly that today is a fine day to begin teaching Eames the virtue of serenity in the face of the utter loss of one’s privacy this line of work dictates.

“How’s that?” Eames demands.

Arthur shrugs elegantly, “No parents, no last name.”

Eames considers this, and then smirks a little, “Always so efficient, aren’t we, Arthur?”

Arthur smiles, “I’m glad to see you’re keeping up.”

\---

And keep up he does. Eames’ skill for in-dream forgery surpasses even Arthur’s most optimistic predictions, and he picks up the rest of the essentials of shared-dreaming with similar skill and ease.

As Eames’ competence grows, so does his predilection for challenging Arthur’s authority, his attempts at entrenching a formal dress-code, his preferred strategies, and, quite often, his alleged inability to ‘have a bit of fun.’ He’s particularly unimpressed, and vocally so, with Arthur’s approach to waking them up from dreams.

It only takes Eames a few weeks of training and one trial extraction to demand to know why Arthur always insists on shooting him at the end of things.

“We can’t always time the sedatives to put us under for the correct amount of time,” Arthur reminds him tetchily, and not for the first time.

“I understand that, Arthur,” Eames bites back, his voice more exasperated than angry, “But there bloody well has to be another way to get out of dream-space that doesn’t involve the frankly unpleasant experience of _dying_ over and over. Surely I’m not the only one who objects to this in our entire profession.”

Arthur is a little proud of Eames for referring to what they do as a profession, but he keeps his satisfied smirk to himself.

“There are other ways, yes. But this one is the most reliable.”

This is, Arthur has always firmly believed, why death was the option Helen had preferred. Unlike musically cued kicks or timed sedatives, a clean shot to the head was guaranteed to wake you up. That is, unless you’ve already planned not to. But they weren’t going to have that problem, and Eames didn’t need to know it was a possibility because it wasn’t going to be, not with them.

“What are the other ways?” Eames demands when Arthur doesn’t elaborate further.

Arthur narrows his eyes, wondering why he’s pushing. Eames is always pushing, but this time it somehow feels different.

“Does it bother you, really?” He asks, letting an amount of concern that frankly shocks him slip into his voice.

Eames sighs dramatically, and stuffs his hands into his pants rather sulkily. Arthur pauses to be horrified once again by the way said pants, a uniquely horrible shade of green, clash with his burnt orange shirt.

“Of _course_ it bothers me, it’s _dying_ , for godssake.”

Arthur wrinkles his forehead, “But it isn’t real.”

“Nothing in the dream is strictly real, Arthur,” he says, his voice more serious than Arthur has ever heard it, “but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t _matter_.”

Arthur can’t think of anything to reply to this, so he walks away without doing so.

He’s half-afraid he won’t see Eames the following morning for their scheduled training, but when he arrives at the warehouse, 15 minutes before the time they’ve prearranged, Eames is already there, waiting for him.

Arthur ignores the way the sight of Eames settles something jangled in his nerves, distracting himself by immediately pulling out the whiteboard and beginning to explain to Eames precisely how one preforms a kick.

After that, he only shoots Eames when he absolutely has to.

\---

They work a few more jobs in Chicago before Arther gets antsy, feeling the need to indulge the wanderlust in his blood a lifetime spent living out of hotel rooms and warehouses has addicted him to. When he voices this desire, he’s pleased to discover Eames has been having similarly restless thoughts.

They discuss their options, and ultimately Eames defers to Arthur’s preference that they travel to New York. It is, perhaps with the exception of his earliest childhood loyalties to Los Angeles, his favorite city in the world.

They take a train, because Eames wants to see more of the States, and because he claims the trains remind him of being home. Arthur doesn’t mind the conciliation to Eames’ comfort, despite the 3.2 extra hours the train adds to their journey.

When Eames falls asleep on his shoulder somewhere just shy of the Ohio border, well, Arthur finds he doesn’t really mind that, either.

\---

They get a small apartment, close enough to the garment district Arthur has chosen for their area of operations, but out of the way enough that they should be able to hide out there, if need be. Arthur has connections with several influential mafia families in the six Burroughs, and he and Helen have a history of successful jobs in the city long enough to ensure he and Eames will have no trouble finding work as long as they see fit to stay.

The apartment has two bedrooms, but Arthur quickly realizes he’s going to need to commandeer the second bedroom for a workspace. Eames simply shrugs, and says that that’s what pull-out couches are for.

Arthur spends their first few days in New York making calls and securing a place for them to work in private. He also furnishes his study with a mahogany secretary and matching chair, cushioned with maroon leather. He scandalizes himself slightly with the expense, typically preferring to keep his luxuries a bit more portable, not to mention practical, like his suits, which he needs for work, which he needs to be taken seriously. At his age, some people still think he doesn’t know how to handle himself. A good suit and a steady hand on the trigger usually disabuses skeptics of their doubts fairly quickly.

While Arthur is busy putting out subtle feelers to potential employers and organizing his study, Eames buys them groceries and locates the closest reputable dry cleaners and less than reputable backroom where he can cheat at poker. Almost every time he leaves the apartment, Eames comes back with a bag full of food in one hand and a miscellaneous household item in the other.

One day, Arthur leaves the confines of his study to discover that Eames has furnished their apartment almost entirely out of half-broken furniture he’s no-doubt found abandoned on the side of the road. Nothing matches, and at least two of the hideous lamps he’s acquired don’t even work. When Arthur mentions this, Eames assures him distractedly that he’s working on it.

It seems that he is, because the next time Arthur emerges, later that day, the lamps are working and the once wobbly coffee table is perfectly stable.

Arthur sits down on the couch, a bit hesitantly at first, but is pleased to discover it is firm and comfortable. “Well done, Eames,” he says, giving credit where credit is due without any of his customary reluctance, which Eames likes to characterize as condescension.

Eames nods at him from the floor where he is crouched, fussing with a toaster. “Thank you, Arthur,” he murmurs dryly, a slight smirk tugging at the corners of his face.

With a oddly contented feeling setting in his stomach, Arthur sighs, leaning back with his hands behind his head and his feet resting securely on the coffee table, and watches Eames work.

\---

Eames makes terrible coffee, but he knows his way around an omelet. He sings in the shower, and out of it, and his voice is open, full of an invitation to sing along. Occasionally, Arthur finds himself doing so without even realizing it.

He’s neater than Arthur expects, as fastidious with respect to his belongings as he is reckless and sloppy with his personal appearance. He likes listening to the BBC radio and can play cards against himself for hours without getting bored. He’s terrible at chess, but frequently beats Arthur at poker.

He likes to walk the streets at night, just before dawn, and he doesn’t mind company as long as no words are spoken. Arthur has always preferred silence, and so this arrangement suits him just fine.

Most other times, however, there’s little that can shut Eames up, but Arther doesn’t mind that, so much, either. At least not once he’s learned that Eames rarely expects or even wants a response. It also helps that, when Arthur’s responses are short-tempered and abusive, as they often are, Eames takes it in stride, grinning at Arthur like his insults are Eames’ favorite kind of encouragement.

When they’re working, planning a job or executing one, Eames is a relentlessly stubborn promoter of his preferred strategy, but he always listens to Arthur in the end, that is, on the occasions Arthur can’t be brought around to Eames’ way of thinking. More often than Arthur is entirely comfortable, Eames _does_ manage to change his mind.

After a few months, they’ve made quite a name for themselves, and a small fortune. Arthur knows, intellectually, that it’s probably about time to move on, to pick up and start again somewhere new. But every time he comes back to their apartment after a long day and finds Eames bent over the kitchen table playing cards or fixing the clock radio he refuses to throw out, no matter how many times it breaks, Arthur always feels such an instantaneous, heady rush of _home_ that he can never quite bear to bring it up.

\---

For those first few months, Eames is true to his word and sleeps on the couch. He even remembers to fold it up and tuck away his extra pillows each morning. Arthur has minor guilt pangs about taking up both bedrooms, but Eames never complains. And given that he tends to gripe, needle and pester almost as unconsciously as breathing, Arthur chooses to assume his notable silence on the matter means Eames really doesn’t mind.

They spend enough nights falling asleep on lawn chairs in the warehouse or at the kitchen table talking strategy that Arthur’s bedroom gets very little use anyway.

This all changes the night they come home drenched after getting caught up in sudden torrential downpour on their way home from hard day gathering intel. Arthur is shivering so violently under his suit that he strips with a very uncharacteristic lack of ceremony, leaving a trail of wet clothes hanging from every available surface between the front door and the bedroom. He does so while still talking to Eames about the woman they spent the day following, the ex-fiance of their current mark, who Eames will be impersonating in an upcoming job. It isn’t until he’s about to climb into bed, wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs, that Arthur realizes Eames hasn’t followed him. That he is, in fact, still standing completely still in the foyer, dripping wet and shivering hard.

“Come on,” Arthur growls impatiently over his shoulder, as he climbs into bed.

Apparently Eames doesn’t need to be told twice, because suddenly he’s moving fast, stripping with even less care than Arthur, leaving his wet clothes where they fall.

He climbs into bed with Arthur, and for a moment they just lie there, facing each other silently as they catch their breath. Once the shivering subsides, Arthur launches back into his discussion of how to use the day’s recon to complete their job. Eames stays silent, nodding occasionally, listening to Arthur’s voice until he falls asleep.

\---

They wake up tangled together, Eames’ arms around Arthur’s waist, Arthur’s left hand twisted up in Eames’ hair.

It’s not as awkward as it probably has every right to be.

Eames wakes with a grunt while Arthur is in the process of extracting himself from Eames’ grasp. He scrubs his face and offers Arthur a garbled, “Morning,” before dragging himself out of bed and into the bathroom.

He leaves the door open.

Arthur closes his eyes and considers going back to sleep, but when Eames exits the bathroom he heads straight for the coffee machine, which gets Arthur on his feat, loudly vetoing the idea.

“You make the breakfast around here, remember?” He chides sternly, elbowing Eames away, “Leave the coffee to me.”

Eames sniffs delicately and says, “I’ll have you know I make excellent tea,” as though this is good reason to excuse his appalling coffee making skills.

Arthur smiles widely behind Eames’ back, “I’m sure you do.”

After that, it just seems silly for Eames to go to the trouble of setting up the couch for bed every night. Not when Arthur’s bed is clearly big enough for two.

\---

Nearly six months after they’ve moved to New York, they work an extraction for the eldest son of the Corleone family. The job is a success, but all of Arthur’s scrupulous research failed to reveal that their employer’s younger brother has a chip on his shoulder large enough for him to sell them out to the mark after the extraction is complete.

Which is how Arthur ends up tied to a chair with a sweaty rag stuffed in his mouth as the man he recently stole secrets from demands he reveal who is partner is. As he has for the past five and a half-hours, Arthur remains silent, the resolved look in his eyes making it clear there would be no point removing the gag.

He can sense the mark losing patience, waving his gun in growing frustration. Arthur keeps his eyes half-closed as he contemplates possible exits, trying to determine exactly how quickly he would have to move to free himself with the knife he has stashed in his boot.

He’s poised to make his move when a body comes crashing through the room’s only window.

It’s Eames.

In the furious commotion that follows, Arthur is shot in the shoulder while Eames manages to dispatch two of his captors. Despite the searing pain of his wound, Arthur is able to free himself and land his knife in the mark’s gut just as Eames’ shot finishes him off.

Eames rushes over to him, not even pausing to speak before he begins tearing at Arthur’s shirt to survey the wound.

“At least we won’t need to dig the bullet out,” he says philosophically as he inspects the through and clear wound.

Arthur grunts and grasps his forearm, bracing himself against the pain as Eames pours the contents of his flask onto his bloody shoulder.

“Glad to see you came prepared,” he remarks dryly, when he’s able.

Eames smiles grimly, “I just hope you aren’t surprised I came at all.”

“No,” Arthur responds immediately, because he isn’t. He knew Eames would come for him.

Eames smiles again, less darkly this time, and finishes patching Arthur up with his handkerchief.

“Shame about your shirt,” he says, helping Arthur up.

When Arthur simply raises a delicate eyebrow, Eames claps him on his good shoulder and says, “No matter, I’ll just have to buy you another. Maybe something with a little color in it, for once.”

\---

They don’t go back to the apartment. Arthur wants nothing more than to curl up on his bed, preferably with Eames, although he’s careful not to analyze that particular desire too closely. But as much as he wants to, he knows they can’t go back there. They have no idea if their home has been discovered, but after the wreckage they left behind in the restaurant, the risk is too great.

“I suppose I’ll have to buy you quite a few shirts,” Eames amends as they drive.

Arthur closes his eyes, and smiles.

\---

He’s feeling decidedly less serene when he wakes up in a strange motel room a few hours later and finds Eames picking glass out of his hair.

“Not your best entrance.”

“But surely one of my most memorable,” Eames counters with a slight wink.

Arthur sighs, “What if it had been you, what would I have--”

“If it had been me, trapped in that chair, then you would have charged in, possibly a tad more stealthily than I, and in the end, the result would have been the same. Them dead, us on our way out of this godforsaken country.”

Arthur’s facing him now, and he raises both eyebrows.

“We can’t stay here,” Eames states the obvious as though he expects Arthur to argue.

“I know that,” he retorts sharply, blaming the heat in his voice on the residual anger he feels he’s entitled to, given that he was quite recently held captive and mildly tortured. Not to mention that he’s being forced to leave behind _all_ his best suits.

“Not just the state, either, darling,” Eames continues, “I’d say the whole continent,” he waggles his eyebrows suggestively, “What is your opinion on seeing the Raj?”

Arthur shakes his head despairingly. “You’re an imperialist swine, and I don’t know how I got mixed up with you.” Despite the intended harshness of his words, they come off sounding fond.

Something Eames clearly picks up on, because he smiles triumphantly and says, “India it is.”

\---

In Mumbai, maybe because he feels Arthur has lost home-field advantage, Eames starts being argumentative - well, _more_ argumentative, at any rate. He challenges Arthur down to the last detail, argues with him over tactics and fights about which jobs to take, and which to steer clear of.

But instead of making them less effective, their near constant and occasionally violent disagreements actually make their operation stronger, their results better.

They’re an almost perfectly balanced team; Arthur’s attention to detail and his relentless perfectionism combined with Eames’ flare for improvisation and highly imaginative deceit. They work so well together that Arthur is able to convince himself, most of the time, that that is all they need be. Work has been his life so long he doesn’t know anything else, and he can’t remember a time he wanted it any other way.

But after Eames single-handedly distracts their tail and successfully steals them a cab so that they can get out of the city after a failed extraction, and they flea the city in a hail of gunfire, laughing all the way, Arthur is forced to admit he doesn’t have a pupil anymore, not even just a partner. As he watches Eames drive with a reckless abandon that still manages to feel perfectly controlled, all the while finding himself unable to keep the grin off his face, Arthur finally admits, at least to himself, that he has a friend. He finds the word fails to describe all the things Eames has somehow manged to become to him, but Arthur contents himself with calling what they have friendship, for now, and working up from there.

\---

After fleeing Mumbai, they lie low in Tibet for a week and then travel to Athens, because Eames misses being near the sea and because Arthur can’t bother to come up with any valid objections. Indeed, he finds himself disoriented and oddly passive over those few weeks they spend in transit, and he eventually stops trying to contribute entirely and leaves everything up to Eames.

Which is how they end up in a small fishing village on the Grecian coast, living in what can generously be describe as a hut, but which is more accurately described as a cave that has a lean-to attached to its entrance.

Eames goes fishing in the mornings, and cooks them breakfast in a fire-pit in front of their abode. Arthur is forced to abandon his carefully pressed-suits and Armani ties in favor of wearing the linen pants and cotton-button up shirts Eames brings home from one of his trips to the local market.

At night, they sleep curled around each other on a bed made of pillows and grass mats, and sometimes they sleep through most of the day as well as the night. For the first time in years, Arthur dreams in the midst of natural sleep. He dreams of himself as an old man, tired but happy after a long life, and in his dreams, Eames is always with him.

They live like this for weeks, slowly turning into months, until Arthur almost can’t imagine living any other way. Until the life of danger and espionage he was born into begins to feel as distant and hazy as any other dream.

\---

This is, rather predictably, around the time that a young boy from their village arrives at their “door” with a message Arthur is alarmed to discover their location is well-known enough to deliver. If a cave in Greece isn’t off the radar enough to avoid his old contacts, and enemies, he doubts anywhere will be. It was probably nothing more than a foolish hope to think otherwise.

The message is about Helen. She seems to have, finally, woken up.

He can’t decide if he’s more surprised by the fact that she was wrong in her prediction that she never would or to be informed that she’s asking for him.

\---

Arthur does not know how to explain the situation to Eames. Aside from a few initial inquiries, the topics of their families and their pasts have been left there, in the past, kept safely away from the future, the life, they’ve been building together.

But now that Arthur’s past has finally caught up with him, he finds himself unable to simply pick up from this new life and return to his old one. He had always thought that, if the time ever came, he would part with Eames, or whoever he was working with at the time, not expecting, particularly, that his partnership with the forger would have lasted this long, and return to Helen. He had expected to do this more-so out of pragmatics than sentimentality; never anticipating that he would find anyone whom he worked with as well as he worked with her. Never expecting to have other reasons, reasons that _were_ based on something even deeper than sentimentality, that might prevent him from severing all ties and returning to her.

He hadn’t planned to become dependent on Eames. He certainly hadn’t planned to _like_ him. The fact that on paper their personalities should have got on approximately as well as oil and water had, in fact, been considered by Arthur to be a great advantage when he first decided to recruit Eames. Helen had taught him that once you go into business with someone, particularly _this_ business, any affection you may have for them had to be placed far below your commitment to professionalism and completing the mission. It was the only way to stay alive.

But now, it seems, Arthur is every bit as concerned with Eames’ life as he is his own, and that too was quite assuredly not a part of the plan. However, despite Arthur’s propensity for carefully laid and successfully executed plans, he’s forced to accept that the situation with Eames has long ago gotten away from him, taking on its own energy and direction. This is possibly something he can blame on Eames, as he has a general wont to do, but instead is something he is more inclined to put down to nature, to the inevitability of a force outside themselves that has seemed determined, almost from the very start, to push them inextricably together.

\---

And so, in the spirit of giving in, Arthur tells Eames about Helen, about his childhood introduction to the world of dreams, and about the unfortunate possibility that they will have to travel back to Chicago to deal with her.

After he finishes speaking, Eames stares at Arthur for an uncomfortably long time. A silent Eames, he knows from experience, rarely bodes well.

Just as the silence between them is becoming too excruciating for Arthur to bear, Eames barks out, “Do you mean to tell me that _not only_ have I been wrong all this time in assuming that you sprung to life a fully formed and magnificent example of the male specimen, designer suits and all, but that you are, in fact, the progeny of criminal mastermind and possible evil genius?”

“She’s really always been more of a morally grey mastermind,” Arthur responds primly.

Eames glares at him for a minute, probably on principle, and then says, “I’m afraid that doesn’t stop me from wanting to fly back to America so that I can _strangle_ her.”

Arthur blinks at Eames in surprise, “Why?”

“Why?” Eames booms. “Well for starters, hows about for forcing her only child into a life of subconscious crime at the age of seven, only to then abandon him out of pure selfishness when she got tired of said life.”

He’s entirely serious, troublingly so. Arthur can almost hear the gears moving in Eames’ occasionally fiendish mind as he works out the logistics of returning to the States to commit what he clearly believes to be the justifiable homicide of the women who was once Arthur’s mother.

Arthur appreciates the sentiment, or at least the place inside Eames from which it originates, but he can’t really have his current partner off murdering his former one. That sort of thing has to be bad for business.

In a rather desperate move to calm and distract, he puts his hand on Eames’ knee. He’s immensely relieved that this has the desired effect, his touch sending a visible tremor across Eames’ features until they settle from enraged and murderous into something soft, almost serene. Arthur congratulates himself on a crisis narrowly averted, although he’s mildly alarmed when Eames takes the opportunity to cover Arthur’s hand with his own, squeeze, and then interlock their fingers.

“Please don’t,” Arthur says softly, and hopes Eames doesn’t think he’s asking for his hand back.

“Don’t what, darling?”

“Strangle Helen,” Arthur clarifies, trying, and failing, to ignore the _darling_ part. It isn’t the first time such an endearment has fallen off Eames’ tongue, but it is the first time it has occurred to Arthur that Eames might actually _mean_ it.

Eames raises a petulantly defiant eyebrow, “Oh? Why shouldn’t I? The way you described your last encounter, she seems to be gunning for the end of her life, and she certainly deserves it.”

Arthur looks down at their hands, and then back at Eames’ face, trying to see this from his point of view. He understands that Eames’ outrage is genuine, and that he believes himself to be upset on Arthur’s behalf, because Arthur has been somehow wronged.

He can understand the impulse, but he’s really never thought about it that way. It was just his life, and he’s never bothered to consider it happening any other way. He wouldn’t have wanted it to.

“You should refrain because I’m asking you to,” he says, sincerely believing that this will be enough for Eames, although he adds, “And because I love what I do.” What she trained him to do.

Although perhaps to say he loved it wouldn’t have always been entirely accurate. He’d loved being as good at it as he was, but he hadn’t really _enjoyed_ it until Eames.

Eames nods dismissively, “And you are the very best at it, which I know you also enjoy. The point would have been to give you anything like a choice in the matter.”

Arthur looks at him carefully, “I didn’t give you much choice, and you’ve never seemed to mind.”

Eames smiles at him far too knowingly. “I always had a choice about the work, darling. It was the bit where I wanted nothing more than to be wherever you were that I never really had a say in.”

Arthur tries his best, but he truly can’t think of anything to reply. In the end, he settles for squeezing Eames’ hand, and reveling in the feeling of deep relief that washes over him when Eames squeezes back.

\---

“It’s good to see you back in a suit,” Eames says, leering appreciatively.

Artur is astounded to discover he feels the same way about seeing Eames back in one of his more offensively garish ensembles. It’s confusing, yet powerfully comforting, somehow, to discover that they can stand together, looking so much like the people they’ve spent the past months leaving behind, and still experience the thread of want and need that solidified between them while they lived with threadbare clothes on their backs and sand in their hair.

He shocks himself again by telling Eames as much, and is rewarded by an almost shy smile that is quickly overturned by a smug smirk and the invasion of Arthur’s private space.

One minute they are standing a perfectly civil distance apart in the bathroom of the Athens International Airport preparing to fly to Chicago, and the next, Eames has Arthur crowded up against an empty bathroom stall, holding him securely in place by his lapels.

Arthur can’t even pretend to mind that the first suit he’s worn in weeks is already getting wrinkled. Not when Eames’ face, and most notably his lips, are so close that they seem to block out everything else, as though Arthur’s internal compass is being reoriented to point only at Eames.

“You’re a terrible tease,” he tells Eames eventually, when he can do so without his voice sounding breathy and wanton.

Eames chuckles, low in his chest, and tugs Arthur’s mouth to his.

As first kisses go, this one loses points for location, but amply makes up for that fact with the rest. Having Eames close enough to touch is world’s away from the actual press of their lips together, to the way their bodies fold together as if they were meant for nothing else. Arthur is dangerously close to making some kind of keening sound and tearing away the clothes he was so recently happy to see Eames in when Eames abruptly withdraws.

This leaves Arthur glaring at him incredulously, heart hammering in his chest, breathing ragged.

Eames smiles, full of warmth and fondness, and straightens Arthur’s tie, doing his best to smooth the wrinkled lapels of Arthur’s new suit.

“Don’t look at me like that, you tart. We have a plane to catch.”

Arthur would like nothing more than to say to hell with their plane and finish what they’ve started, but he’s never been one to miss an appointment, not even with something as good as Eames on option as an alternative. Besides, there have to be better places to lose one’s virginity.

Preferably places with 600 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and a well stocked mini bar.

\---

He doesn’t think of what they have in terms of _love_ until Eames offhandedly calls him that as he hands Arthur his scotch on the plane back to Chicago.

It isn’t an emotion he ever expected to associate with himself, love. Not something he imagined he would ever genuinely be able to claim he felt for another person, or that others felt for him. But as with so many other surprises that have come from Eames, Arthur finds himself glad to have been proven wrong.

\---

“Are you going to want to start working with her again?” Eames asks somewhere over the Atlantic ocean.

Arthur is surprised by the question, namely that Eames would consider this a viable option, and answers with a decisive, “No.”

“Then why are we going back to Chicago?”

“Professional courtesy,” he answers simply. “She did train me, after all. I owe her.”

Eames eyes him speculatively. “Because she taught you about paradoxical architecture and stealing from people’s dreams; not because she’s your mother?”

Arthur looks down at his hand, which Eames is holding so casually, so naturally, and wonders if this, or more accurately discovering that he is capable of this, will ever cease to amaze him.

“As I told you once before, I don’t have a mother. She stopped being that years ago. But she still invested years in my training, and for that I can at least fly first class across the ocean to hear what she has to say.”

Eames stares at him for a long time, but eventually seems to accept this. As usual, he demonstrates a profound willingness to accept what he can’t change, or hope to understand, about Arthur. Arthur will likely never be able to tell Eames how grateful he is for that, but then, Eames probably doesn’t need him to.

“And after we’ve heard what she has to say?”

Arthur shrugs, “I don’t know about you, but I must confess to missing New York.” Missing _home_.

Eames smiles immediately, leaning in closer in his seat, “What do you suppose the chances are that the Gambini’s will still have someone watching our flat after this long?”

Arthur smiles slyly back, giving himself over to a combination of recklessness and serenity he has only ever felt with Eames, “As long as you’ve got my back, I’m willing to risk it.”

Epilogue;

As planned, they return to New York after listening to Helen give them an offer Arthur finds it comfortingly easy to refuse. She lets him go without protest, remarking only that Arthur’s greatest weakness had always been that he was loyal far beyond what was good for him, and that she was glad to see he had finally found someone worthy of that quality.

They spend two weeks surveying their old apartment from a safe distance before Arthur is satisfied that no one else is staking the place out. When they arrive upon the doorstep of their first home, as Arthur thinks of it now, Eames offers to carry him over the threshold.

Arthur is so happy to be back, he almost lets him.


End file.
